Its success ruined his 'simple life'

HANOI - Three minutes. That is all the time it took for Mr Dong Nguyen's tweets to go from graciousness to distress.

At 6.12pm last Saturday, Mr Dong, the creator of the free hit mobile game Flappy Bird, posted a link to an article by PCMag sharing seven tips for making high scores on his game.

Earlier, he had even replied to compliments sent in by satisfied players to his Twitter account, @dongatory, with gracious words of thanks.

However, by 6.15pm, Mr Dong had tweeted: "I can call 'Flappy Bird' a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it."

It came as a great shock to fans when the Hanoi-based game developer announced the grounding of the addictive game in a tweet on Sunday, in which he also apologised to Flappy Bird players.

"I am sorry 'Flappy Bird' users, 22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down. I cannot take this any more," Mr Dong said, adding "It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep it any more."

The removal of the game at 1am on Monday created such a commotion on the web that Mr Dong was rumoured to have committed suicide and had received multiple death and suicide threats from around the world.

The reason behind Mr Dong's actions remain a mystery even for detractors of the game like 18 year-old student Kenneth Chong, who said: "While I hated the game, I still am curious about why someone with so much success would want to remove the game he created. I don't think I'll ever understand."

Some speculate that Mr Dong could not handle the publicity he was receiving and was not in favour of addictions to his game. Others believe Mr Dong was pressured to remove the game after accusations that he had infringed on the copyright of Nintendo's Super Mario Bros game.

What makes the deletion all the more intriguing is the fact that Mr Dong had earned himself so much success before he deleted the game.